


and a ghost in the machine

by Dragunov



Category: Pacific Rim (2013), Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Dubious Consent, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-22
Updated: 2013-07-22
Packaged: 2017-12-20 23:58:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/893417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dragunov/pseuds/Dragunov
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A Kaiju's acid kills his sister, and Jan Mauer brings the Jaegar back on his own, and it makes him a madman; or maybe he was a madman all along, and nobody noticed until now, now that he needs a new co-pilot.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and a ghost in the machine

**Author's Note:**

> Jan Mauer is an original character of mine, (usually used in WW2 stories, so this is an AU of an AU), who is somewhat loosely based on Jim Moriarty, SO I tagged it Jim Moriarty/Sebastian Moran in case anyone is looking for a Pacific Rim crossover with said characters; it is essentially the same thing.
> 
> Also I have set this in another slightly alternate universe where the Kaiju attack along all coastlines, not just those of the Pacific, hence Mauer's base is in France. Because it would explain why a German, an Englishman and Frenchman are piloting Jaegers. I like the Atlantic. I do what I want. 
> 
> I don't really expect anyone to read this - I wrote it for fun, but it ended up unexpectedly long (2k is quite long for me), so I decided to post it. If you are reading this, bless you. Bleeesssssssss you.

He writes, that he remembers stumbling from the cockpit of Fever Death, holding his sister’s severed arm. The rest is a blur. He was in a coma, but he is awake now. He writes that he is fine, and ready to pilot again as soon as they can fix Fever Death, and as soon as they find candidate who is compatible.

He is not fine. This much is obvious. But they fix Fever Death anyway because Mauer is the best pilot they have, who is still alive, and the Atlantic will not protect itself. For as long as Kaiju keep rising from the crevice, keep crawling along the sea floor in search of cities to crumble and spines to snap, it is not a choice. 

Fever Death is torn to pieces, and hauled back to the Shatterdome by a helicopter and caravan of semi trucks. Jan is a coma for this part. He spared the sight of his Jaeger’s arm, dislocated, and being driven down the highway. Covered by black canvas as if in the back of a hearse. When he wakes from the coma, he wakes screaming.

He is a shadow in the labyrinth of catwalks stretched across the hangar around Fever Death, as the welders and engineers work. His presence is not needed during the repairs, but he watches anyway, day after day, dark eyes reflecting torch sparks like flecks of foam on a black ocean wave. He watches the installation of wires that will close the distance between man and machine like a wormhole, melding the two, melding two minds. Man and machine.

Wind up toys, being wound up and wound up.

"I’ve always wondered, why-" the repair crew is taking it’s break, and Horst hands out refreshingly freezing sodas from a cooler he rolled into the hangar, as he does every day, his duties as _culinary specialist_ ; he is addressing the Chief Engineer, “people. I mean, why don’t we remote control the Jaeger’s, or program them to control themselves. Planes can fly themselves."

The Chief Engineer tries to smooth a flop of hair back with his fingers, unsuccessfully, the hair clears his forehead but then sticks up in awful directions. He shares a smirk with the mechanical crew surrounding him. “Reaction time, of course," he says, but before Horst can protest about drones and cameras, he adds, “You can’t program a Kaiju fight, don’t be ridiculous. What do you think this is, Rock Em Sock Em? There’s got to be a human behind the machine, making choices!"

Later that evening, Horst takes a tray of food to Mauer’s quarters, what he does every day, like clockwork - his duties as cook - because Mauer refuses to step foot in the mess hall, or more so he forgets that food exists and wouldn’t eat at all, were Horst not constant a reminder. He eats very little of what Horst brings him, anyway, which today is a slice of lemon cake. Horst knocks on the door, once, twice, and when there is no answer, he turns to leave.

The scream freezes him, like skin stuck on ice, the scream shakes him so harshly he drops the tray, lemon cake splatters to the cold metal plates. The scream is Mauer, but broken, animal, both high and guttural, a loss of control of pitch shameful like a loss of control of bladder, and Horst bursts through the door to find him convulsing on the floor, spit foamy and flecked with vomit, pupils blown and two small rivulets of blood flowing slow from his nostrils. Horst shoves his own arm between Mauer’s teeth and Mauer bites hard enough to break skin, but Horst holds him tight; holds him until the seizing stops, and Mauer struggles to sit up and stares at Horst and whispers very faintly, “I will kill you if you say a single word."

Horst covers the bite wound with a colorful big bandage, and explains to the medical officer that he cut himself preparing Friday’s roast, it’s that simple, silly, nothing worth looking at, really. He cleans the cake from the floor.

When Fever Death is finished, finally, Gunter Bischof offers to be Jan’s co-pilot, and it makes sense, because the deeper the bond the better, and their bond is deep - at least Gunter believes it to be so - of course, not as deep as the bond between two twins, but he and Jan have been fucking since Year Zero, the start of the war, and that must _mean_ , that must mean a bond.

So Jan is not surprised when Bischof asks, and he accepts, as if it were a choice.

But the first test of their compatibility is a complete failure, the first Drift, and it is because his sister is in there, too, in the cockpit standing between them, and she is screaming, but not in pain, she is trying to tear Jan and Bischof apart, from each other, apart from themselves, limb from limb, as if they are machines made of pieces, and it strikes Jan that they are, very fragile machines, that pieces of them can be torn off and strewn about and all the king’s welders and all the king’s engineers couldn’t put his sister back together again.

She is screaming, he is screaming, Bischof passes out and the Shatterdome is filled with an ear shattering metallic shriek because Fever Death is trying to pull off its arm.

The power shuts down.

It is the night after their compatibility test and Jan forces his way into Bischof’s room and attacks him. This is the last time they sleep together, their first test is their last, and Bischof tries to strangle Jan to death.

Jan accepts this, enthusiastically, as if it had been his suggestion and not an attempted murder, because they both want him to be dead, to be fixed, repaired, whole again. Jan’s vision fades to black, white with sparks, white like fat beneath flesh eaten away with acid, and he can hear his desperate heartbeat fleeting, but not the breathless and panicked gasping noises he makes when he comes, and Bischof lets go of him, and looks at him, horrified.

He is no longer alone. Part of his sister is become him, clawed deep into his brain, like a parasite, and she is eating at his gray matter and leaving behind her screams to echo the empty space. She screamed, even as the kaiju’s acid ate away at her face and flowed down her throat. She died screaming. He knows. He felt it. He was there, he was her. He screamed, too. He wonders if it was of any comfort to her, that part of her was alive, in him, as she died, alive in the drift between them, but probably not.

He is half of a living ghost. It does not come as a comfort.

The bruises take a week to fade, and his superior officers carefully do not ask. Bischof pretends that Jan is dead, not a haunting, but dead and gone and no longer worth loving. Fever Death stands hollow, frozen as a fossil shell, for months: and whenever a kaiju finds its way ashore, another Jaeger leaves to fight, often, never to return.

For months. Then Sebastian Moran beats Mauer bloody on the mat, but not before Mauer almost succeeds at clawing out the Englishman’s eyes, leaving three long satisfying red streaks down his cheek; Sebastian makes a move to break his wrists, but is ordered reign back, and Sebastian obeys, the perfect soldier, standing at attention, as two men restrain Mauer from trying _again_.

"Fine," Mauer pants, calming, considerably, as a post-adrenaline exhaustion claims his limbs, which fall limp, allowing him to shrug free of the men, who hang at his shoulders, hesitant and expecting a surprise; but Mauer merely walks away, panting, “Fine."

Sergeant Sebastian Moran of Her Majesty’s Royal Marines, having recently passed at Jaeger Academy; and there is a computer in San Francisco that matches single pilots based on brain scans and lengthy personality tests taken throughout training - the pilots nickname it E-Harmony, sneeringly. E-Harmony sends Rudy an urgent email, and the Commander calls Mauer to their research lab, where Rudy and Gottleib are conversing, quietly, over a whiteboarded wall covered with arcane mathematical symbols. “Ninety-eight percent compatible," Rudy explains, “It’s unprecedented."  
  
Mauer wipes his nose with the back of his hand. He considers the red smear.

"He’s coming here," the Commander explains, “whether you like or not."

Sebastian Moran is six foot four, Irish Catholic, skin painted with scars, and close cut hair colored several permutations of red. A tattoo on one arm says _Infidel_ in Arabic, he’s saving space on the other arm for _Kaiju Killer_. He steps off the helicopter to a sea of pitying looks, and it seems as if half the Shatterdome crowds around the combat room to witness their fight.

When he is finished with Mauer, those pitying looks transform to looks of almost fear, which Sebastian likes; he is familiar with looks of fear, prefers them to looks of friendliness or love, but prefers infinitely Mauer’s look of pure violence.

 _I’ll eat your fucking eyes_ , is the first sentence Mauer ever shares with him, in heavily accented English, standing on the edge of the mat, and Moran, in equally accented English, _Bon appetite, you stupid German cunt._

"I’m sorry," Commander Till says, handing Sebastian a towel so he can wipe away at the sweat and blood dripping down his face. “Maybe I should have warned you."  
  
Sebastian smiles, and it is like an added scar. “So, sir," he says, “when do we start?"

He’s seen photos of what London looked like during the Blitz. Black and white photos, when he was a schoolboy, they seemed as if from a black and white world, unreal, or at least too far away to touch. After the first Kaiju attack on London he learns fast, he learns pain on a whole color wheel. He learns to hate in black and white, he learns how fast the mind forgets the way things once were; where that building stood a day before, what building it was. Attack after attack testing his memory of home. He retreats from London into the bunker, returns to a London that will never be the same as before.

A world that will never be the same as before; a world where humans are hunted, and not alone.

Jaeger Academy very rarely accepts pilots who do not come in pairs, and Sebastian Moran very rarely accepts no for an answer. It is a  human quality of his; he is a machine that reads 1 and 1 and 1 and 1 and rejects all 0s. “No," Mauer whispers, in a quiet moment of panic on the mat, when he realizes that Moran is his match. Sebastian has him in a triangle chokehold, but Mauer refuses to tap. He is trapped. “Yes," Sebastian says, when he receives the order, to ship to France’s Shatterdome and test his compatibility with Fever Death’s pilot. " _Yes_."

It will take several days for the technicians to construct a drivesuit in his size.

Sebastian hammers at Mauer’s door with his fist.

"Leave him be," St George says. “He likes to be let alone. Besides, he will be your headache soon. Come to the hangar with me."

St George is tall and skinny - he is a church spire struck by lightning - with righteous nose, and gargoyle eyes, and wild architecture of brown curly hair. As a pilot, he is the pride of France; he is the last pilot in France who is French. He looks at Sebastian, not with pity, nor fear, but an intense curiosity, and an affable contempt. He co-pilots the Jaeger Vagabond King, vive le roi, and himself infects people with a kingly impression, a sort of Louis the XIV grace, surrounded by greasy mechanics.

Sebastian makes a point of walking beside him, not behind, showing his back Mauer’s silent door.

"If you ask me," St George says, and no one is asking. But St George talks to the air above their heads as if he is a saint continuing his conversation with god. “The Kaiju are after us for all the same reasons we go after rats."

"Extermination?" Sebastian offers. He is standing beside the supermassive shoe of Fever Death, and craning his neck back. He is trying to imagine the machine as his muscle, only paying half attention to St George’s sermon; it is neither a new, nor an unpopular theory.  
  
” _Oui_. We are in their cellar, eating their food and shitting in their food. And soon we will have to live as rats live." Where St George walks, the Shatterdome personnel scatter. He gestures to a group of women in coveralls welding their last minute touch to Fever Death. The Shatterdome is dark and claustrophobic, crowded with workers, machines. “See, my rats."

The following morning, they outfit him in the drivesuit, which sticks to his skin like wax, hot, then cooling, as the internal temperature conditions. Mauer is already waiting for him aboard Fever Death’s Conn-Pod; his helmet is on and its internal lights off, so that all Sebastian sees in place of his face is a black reflective blur. _I’ll eat your fucking_ eyes. Sebastian heaves a heavy sigh, and it briefly fogs the glass. His stomach flips, comfortingly, as the Conn-Pod lowers, and this is the moment, this is his moment. All he knows about Mauer is that the man fights dirty, and he’s about to

Initiating Neural Handshake

Sebastian closes his eyes.

drift  
  
 _Sebastian: shoving a boy beneath the floor boards of a house that is being constructed, and covering him with wood, ignoring his sobs and his screams, Sebastian laughing at the creativity of his own cruelty, improvised imprisonment, burying the poor bastard, alive._

_Jan and Richie: catching a frog in a quiet forest, and bisecting it, alive. The frog is screaming._  
  
 _Sebastian: watching with his night vision scope as a legless man drags himself toward his own legs, as if to take them home. The man’s mouth is open. He must be screaming. Artillery still lights up the clear, cold desert sky with a show of bright firey colors and Sebastian turns to the marine sitting next to him, “Fuck," he says, “War is pretty."_

_Jan: running his fingers along the lines of Bischof’s beard, and smiling, but not for Bischof, smiling for Richie, who is screaming. Half her face has been eaten off by an acid, and the other eyeball is only showing white. She is a bissection, a frog, alive. Jan grasps for her, gasps for her, grabs her arm._

Sebastian feels like a city being bombed, being crushed beneath a Kaiju’s wrath. Exterminated. And when he opens his eyes, she is in the cockpit with them, a blue phantom drift, she is clawing at him and screaming. A shriek of metal: Fever Death is moving on its own, and Sebastian disconnects himself, so that he can tear Jan’s helmet from his head. Mauer’s own eyes are white, and blood drips down his chin.

"You want to die, you little fuck?" Sebastian screams. “I can do that for you. I’ll do that for you, for her, when this is done, but first you do this for _me_."

Mauer blinks.  
  
Sebastian’s hands are around his throat, reassuringly.  
  
He licks his lips, his blood. “Yes," he agrees. “Again."  
  
She is with them when they kill their first Kaiju, she is with them whenever, she is screaming, and her screams scared him, irritated him, made his ears bleed, but when he is bashing in the Kaiju’s skull it becomes like a music, a violence made music, he hears in it every man he’s killed, the Kaiju he kills, will kill, Jan’s beautiful and lifeless eyes, and even his own; he has no words to describe it, he doesn’t have to, Jan knows. Together they rip off the Kaiju’s arms with satisfying snap of sinew and bone; and back at the Shatterdome, Jan settles against his body, and Sebastian kisses his collarbone, and Jan runs his fingers along Sebastian’s new tattoo and he smiles.  _  
_


End file.
